


Percentages

by stellarmeadow



Series: Statistics are Bullshit [1]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Coda for 2x17, Eddie's head is a dark place, He needs SO MUCH THERAPY, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:48:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24598528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarmeadow/pseuds/stellarmeadow
Summary: The rain is falling, soft and peaceful, outside Eddie’s bedroom window. All the platitudes about rain are so positive—April showers bring May flowers, without rain there wouldn’t be rainbows, without rain there would be no life.Funny how there are no pretty quotes about the fact that there’s a thirty-four percent increase in traffic fatalities when it rains.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Statistics are Bullshit [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798654
Comments: 31
Kudos: 126





	Percentages

**Author's Note:**

> I think this was a byproduct of all the fluff I was writing for First Kiss week, because fluff it is not. But then the last thing anyone would say about Eddie is that he is all fluffy things and no darkness.

Humans are born to die.

No one wants to think about it, but it’s true. From the first moment out of the womb, the human body immediately starts getting contaminated, inching its way towards a death that nothing, no one, can prevent in the end.

Eddie saw it almost every day at work. Humans old, young, happy, sad, living their lives one second and nothing but a vacant stare and an empty shell the next. 

It’s the cycle of life. It’s an incontrovertible truth. Death is the only thing you can’t outrun. 

But that doesn’t make it suck any less for the people who get left behind.

The rain is falling, soft and peaceful, outside Eddie’s bedroom window. All the platitudes about rain are so positive—April showers bring May flowers, without rain there wouldn’t be rainbows, without rain there would be no life.

Funny how there are no pretty quotes about the fact that there’s a thirty-four percent increase in traffic fatalities when it rains. He knew, because he’d been looking up information, trying to help make sense of Shannon’s death for Christopher. 

But the rain hadn’t mattered yesterday when Shannon was just crossing a street. No, it was a typical sunny day, and yet Shannon still died. She wasn’t even in a car and she died in a traffic accident. Christopher’s mother was nothing but a statistic to be added up the next time someone figured out the difference between traffic fatalities in the rain vs. sun.

Would she make a difference? Would the rain percentage go down? Would her death have any impact on anyone other than the little boy she left behind? 

It would seem from first glance that Eddie was the one at greater risk of leaving Christopher without a parent. Firefighters ran into some of the most dangerous situations human beings faced. 

And yet his chance of dying on the job was less than 1/100 of a percent. 

Overall chance of anyone dying in a car accident? One percent. 

Would Shannon push that number up, too? Maybe it would end up being 1.1 percent. Maybe she’d push it over the edge, something he could show Christopher to say see, your mom isn’t forgotten. She was statistically significant. 

Because that’s what every kid wants to hear—hey, your dead mom is statistically significant. 

Eddie tossed his phone aside. He wouldn’t find any words of comfort that would work, and no statistic could ease the pain of the fact that Christopher had just gotten used to his mom being around, and now she was gone forever.

That she’d been planning to leave was beside the point. Leaving wasn’t the same as dying. Leaving meant cards and letters and calls and hopes that she would come back. 

Instead Christopher only had one parent. One that ran into fires and buildings weakened by earthquakes. And statistics wouldn’t help there. Never mind that he was safer running into danger than driving a car—it wasn’t like a kid who just lost his mom would care about that statistic either.

Statistics didn’t do shit to combat nightmares at any age.

The light knock at the door was Buck, of course. Eddie hadn’t heard Christopher’s crutches, and Buck was the only other one there. Had been there since the hospital the day before, sleeping on the couch, making sure that Eddie and Christopher had everything they needed. 

Eddie glanced over his shoulder. “What’s up?” 

“Dinner’s ready,” Buck said, his words as soft as his knock. “You feel like eating?” 

_No._ But if he didn’t, Christopher wasn’t likely to either. “Yeah,” Eddie said, giving Buck what he hoped passed as some kind of smile. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Buck nodded and turned, leaving as quietly as he’d arrived. 

Eddie watched long after he’d disappeared from view. For just a moment, he imagined that it was Shannon making dinner. That she’d come to check on him because Buck had been the one to be crumpled by a car. To die right in front of Eddie on the way to the hospital. 

And just for a moment, he lets himself feel glad that wasn’t the case. That if he’d had to make the awful, terrible choice between Shannon’s death and Buck’s…he can admit, at least to himself, things turned out the way he would have preferred.

The rain had mostly let up, a hazy rainbow just visible in the distance.

Eddie got up, turned his back on the window, and walked out.

\--  
END

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos make me squeal with delight. :)


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